The dutchman is holding a cock and has a strange look.
He is wearing the typical garb of the time with a wide brimmed hat crowned by a long feather. It is carved from a slightly triangular long part of the ivory. - shared by Walter on facebook -

Dutch learning 蘭學 / 蘭学 rangaku
by extension “Western learning”
is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641–1853, because of the Tokugawa shogunate’s policy of national isolation (sakoku).

Akita ranga (秋田蘭画),
also known as the Akita-ha (秋田派),
was a short-lived school of painting within the larger Japanese genre of ranga, or Dutch-style painting which lasted roughly from 1773-1780. Based in the Akita feudal domain, it was headed by the domain's lord Satake Shozan and his retainer Odano Naotake. Though many ranga artists, most prominently Shiba Kōkan, produced works of European themes, the Akita painters for the most part painted traditional Japanese themes and compositions using Western-style techniques and an approximation of oil paints.

Odano Naotake”Toeizan Shinobazuike”（1770s）Shinobazu no Ike, Pond in UenoAkita Museum of Modern Art

Some of the chief features that distinguish Akita ranga from traditional Japanese painting are the inclusion of shadows, the use of perspective, reflections in water, and the use of blue for sky and sea. In addition, ranga artists left little or no blank space on a work, emulating Western art traditions and going against East Asian ones, and used oils and resins in addition to Japanese pigments to simulate the appearance of oil paint. Many of their works feature a large foreground subject which displays techniques in light and shadow, with a small, distant, landscape, displaying an understanding of perspective techniques.

Nanban art (南蛮美術)
refers to Japanese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced by contact with the Namban (南蛮) or 'Southern barbarians', traders and missionaries from Europe and specifically from Portugal. The term also refers to paintings Europeans brought to Japan.

Namban art developed after the first Portuguese ships arrived in Kyushu in 1543. While Christian icons and other objects were produced, Namban byōbu (南蛮屏風) or folding screens are particularly notable.

"BIOMBO — Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold
Exhibition in Tokyo, 2007
biombo (a transliteration of byobu: a folding screen, or wind-block)
to underscore the historic importance of screen paintings as diplomatic gifts. . WKD : East and West in mists of gold . "

Here the word ORANDA stands for the people of the country, who had access to Nagasaki and once a year an ambassador came all the way to Edo to meet the Shogun.
This year it was just around the third lunar month, when the cherry trees just started to blossom.
The merchants with their "yellow" blond beards were a special treat for the Japanese onlookers.

Written in 1679/10 延宝6/7年
One source explains : Basho received notic that the Dutch merchant delegation were out looking at cherry blossoms, so he told his servant "Hurry up, get the saddle for my horse!"
The hokku has the cut marker KERI at the end of line 2.

The Hollanders in the hokku refer to a procession of the Dutch consul and his attendants who came from Nagasaki to Edo to pay respects to the shogun in the spring. The hokku's first two phrases were borrowed from a well-known passage in the no play Kurama Tengu, which had in turn utilized a waka by Minamoto Yorimasa (1104-80):
hana sakaba tsugemu to iishi yamazato no
tsukai wa kitari uma ni kura oke

When the blossoms bloom,
will you let me know? I had asked
the forest ranger . . .
Now that I hear him coming,
put a saddle on my horse! Tr. and Comment by Makoto Ueda

even the dutch
are here for the blossoms
saddle my nag! Tr. Robin D. Gill

The Dutchmen have come
to watch the cherry blossoms !
put the saddle on my horse Tr. Gabi Greve

. . . . .

In 1674 Basho was inducted into the inner circle of the haikai profession, receiving secret teachings from Kitamura Kigin (1624–1705).
He wrote this hokku in mock tribute to the Shogun:

Even the Captain of the Dutch Commercial Office
arrived groveling
at spring of shogun-king

This haiku refers to the fact that only Dutch merchants as foreigners were permitted to stay in the office built up on the artificial islet named Dejima in Nagasaki. In return, every year they were obliged to make a voyage from Nagasaki to Edo to call on Tokugawa shogun-king to pay their official respects. Not knowing other Western foreigners, Basho regarded the Dutch merchants’ long processions as absolute subjection to his shogun-king. The cited haiku sings of peaceful prosperity that reigned in the capital Edo at the beginning of the year.
The Japanese word “Kapitan” derived from a Portuguese word “Capitão” adds this haiku the novelty of Edo which had thus become slightly internationalized. The second line “tsukuba hase-keri” (arrived groveling) has a quite humorous nuance peculiar to the Danrin haiku school. Basho at this time in his career can be seen to be satisfied totally with Edo’s urbanism, moreover sympathized with it.
Tr. and comment . Ban’ya Natsuishi .
Modernity and anti-urbanism in Basho Matsuo

- quoteThe Dutch East India Company
and Japan
Maritime Asia, as I use the term, encompasses the lands in and around the Japan Sea, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Bay of Bengal, as well as all of Indonesia and the Philippines. The peoples of this densely populated, economically vibrant area, which includes southern coastal China and Japan, have been linked by maritime commerce for centuries, thanks to the seasonal sea breezes caused by temperature differences between the water and surrounding land masses.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch East India Company, also known as the VOC (short for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or United East India Company), played a key role in sustaining these links, in the process of building a network that covered almost the entire region.

- quote - Dejima (Japanese: 出島, "exit island")
in old Western documents latinized as 'Decima', 'Desjima', 'Dezima', 'Disma', or 'Disima', was a small fan-shaped artificial island built in the bay of Nagasaki in 1634 by local merchants. This island, which was formed by digging a canal through a small peninsula, remained as the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period. Dejima was built to constrain foreign traders as part of sakoku, the self-imposed isolationist policy. Originally built to house Portuguese traders, it was used by the Dutch as a trading post from 1641 until 1853. Covering an area of 120 m × 75 m (9000 m2, or 0.9 hectares), it later was integrated into the city.

In 1922, "Dejima Dutch Trading Post" was designated a Japanese national historic site.
snip
The shogun Iemitsu ordered the construction of the artificial island in 1634, to accommodate the Portuguese traders living in Nagasaki and prevent the propagation of their religion. But after an uprising of the predominantly Christian population in the Shimabara-Amakusa region, the Tokugawa government decided to expel all Western nationals except the Dutch employees of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC).- - - More in the WIKIPEDIA !

The Dutch East India Company "United East India Company"
was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.
. . . VOC headquarters were located in Ambon during the tenures of the first three Governors General (1610–1619), but it was not a satisfactory location. Although it was at the centre of the spice production areas, it was far from the Asian trade routes and other VOC areas of activity ranging from Africa to India to Japan.
. . . The VOC traded throughout Asia. Ships coming into Batavia from the Netherlands carried supplies for VOC settlements in Asia. Silver and copper from Japan were used to trade with India and China for silk, cotton, porcelain, and textiles.
. . . The Company supported Christian missionaries and traded modern technology with China and Japan. A more peaceful VOC trade post on Dejima, an artificial island off the coast of Nagasaki, was for more than two hundred years the only place where Europeans were permitted to trade with Japan.
. . . Around 1670, two events caused the growth of VOC trade to stall. In the first place, the highly profitable trade with Japan started to decline.
. . . Though the VOC substituted Bengali for Chinese silk other forces affected the supply of Japanese silver and gold. The shogunate enacted a number of measures to limit the export of these precious metals, in the process limiting VOC opportunities for trade, and severely worsening the terms of trade. Therefore, Japan ceased to function as the lynchpin of the intra-Asiatic trade of the VOC by 1685.
Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade.- - - More in the WIKIPEDIA !

I FIRST CONTACT
One fine June afternoon in 1598, five ships in Rotterdam ready their departure for a long journey. The crew have been told that their destination will be the Moluccas to buy spices, and to explore the "Silver-rycke" (the Silver Empire) of Japan. But once out on the high seas, the sailors of the five vessels, which are heavily loaded with weaponry, are informed of their additional tasks - to raid and plunder Portuguese and Spanish strongholds along the route in South America and Asia and to wreak damage on their enemies, understandable objectives in those turbulent times.

II THE JAPANESE-DUTCH RELATIONSHIP
III THE DUTCH TRADING HOUSE IN HIRADO, 1609-1641
IV 1641-1853: THE DUTCH IN DESHIMA
V LEARNING FROM THE DUTCH: RANGAKU
VI THE COURT JOURNEY
VII IMPACT ON THE ARTS
VIII THE LATE EDO PERIOD
IX THE MODERNIZATION OF JAPAN
X DUTCH CIVIL ENGINEERS IN THE MEIJI PERIOD
XI THE WAR, 1942-1945
XII PRESENT DAY RELATIONS BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE NETHERLANDS, 1945 to the present
XIII COMMEMORATION OF 400 YEARS OF RELATIONS, 2000 - source : japan.nlembassy.org -

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150-year-old images reveal what Japanese artists once thought about exotic American visitorsInspired by the dress and habits of visiting Americans, artists in 1850s Japan once dedicated themselves with an ethnographic intensity to the study of exotic Western newcomers. Today, the artwork provides Americans with a novel perspective on their ancestors, described in portrait titles like People of the Barbarian Nations – Americans, and Americans’ Love for Children.

This particular genre of woodcut is known as Yokohama-e, and was produced in the small fishing village of Yokohama, today one of Japan’s most international cities. Yokohama was one of the first ports that Japan opened to foreign trade, at the insistence of the American government. The US made several failed attempts to get Japan’s attention throughout the early 19th century before finally forcing Japan out of isolation in 1854.

The images below were retrieved from the digital archives of the US Library of Congress..herehttp://qz.com/473721/150-year-old-images-reveal-what-japanese-artists-once-thought-about-exotic-american-visitors/.

This is more like a blog for noting that the so-called Western-type of "one-point perspective" method is not the only viable way to represent a pictorial space on a two dimensional surface of painting (scrolls, folding and sliding screens) and ukiyo-e woodblock prints. This blog is a reconstitution of what I have posted yesterday in response to the question of Japanese perspective methods. (References are made to the six photos below.)

By the time of the first print dating from the early 20th century ("Yabakei", Hashiguchi Goyō, 1880-1921 - 1918), the Western-type perspective method was not an issue. This method, as you know, involves showing on a flat surface where the closer the object the larger it is drawn, and the farther the object smaller it is, which the Japanese call "enkinhō" (遠近法) method, as if the space is receding into the background. This perspective method has the root in the early 15th-century Italian Renaissance, supposedly "invented" by such artists as Donatello, Lorenze Giberti, Massacio, all before 1425. This is the so-called one-point perspective, and was organized by imposting strict geometry on to the flat canvas--geometry works with the basic concept of proportion, and thus the closer the object, the larger it is and so on. Just as contemporaneous as the early Italian Renaissance artists, those working in norther Europe also used the similar perspective method. They include Robert Campin (who is also referred to as the artist called the Master of Flémalle), Huber and Jan Van Eyck brothers (the best know work, the Ghent Altarpiece at the Church of St. Bavo in Ghent today), Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hieronimus Bosch, Conrad Witz, and so on, all of whom make up the so-called Northern Renaissance. .

Introduction of Western-type perspective method: Shiba Kokan (司馬 江漢, 1747 – November 19, 1818)Now, the European one-point perspective method was transmitted to Japan via the Dutch traders in the 17th to 18th century through etchings and oil paintings. The Japanese intellectuals in the later part of the 18th century were interested in understanding how this one-point perspective method works among other Western ideas such as medicine. These intellectuals interested in "Western" ideas form the group called Rangaku sha (蘭学者), those who are interested in the Dutch studies. One of them, Shiba Kokan, experiments in the 1780s the Western one-point perspective method together with etching and oil painting. The attached photo shows one of those experiments, showing the Ryogoku Bridge in Edo/Tokyo (両国橋), Tweelandbruk (Ryogoku Bridge); British Museum:

Note on the question of pictorial space in Japanese art.Yoshio Kusaba• The Western perspective method as incorporated in the ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the 18th century: the "uki-e" (浮絵)• The traditional Japanese pictorial space representation-- "fukinukiyatai" (吹き抜き屋台)--.https://www.facebook.com/groups/collectingjapaneseceramics/permalink/10153079774758148/.

Nagasakiya 長崎屋 Inn at Hongokucho (石町 Gokucho)Ambassadors coming from Nagasaki for the Edo visit used to stay here and many doctors living nearby enjoyed to talk to the foreigners to increase their knowledge of the world outside Japan.Herberge der Niederländer in Edo, "Dutch Inn" .https://edoflourishing.blogspot.jp/2013/10/jookamachi-castle-town.html.